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Transition-metal-doped NiSe2 nanosheets towards efficient hydrogen evolution reactions

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Abstract

Transition metal diselenides are promising electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution and therefore different approaches have been proposed to enhance their catalytic activity. Herein, we describe systematic studies of the dependence of transition-metal doping on the catalytic activity of NiSe2 by first principles calculations, where Fe is demonstrated to be the best candidate element to tune the electrocatalytic activity of NiSe2 with lower ΔGH* values and increased electrical conductivity. To provide further experimental evidence, Fe-doped NiSe2 porous nanosheets grown on carbon cloth are successfully developed. These nanosheets show significantly improved efficiency for hydrogen evolution reactions compared to their un-doped counterpart. The optimized Ni0.8Fe0.2Se2 electrocatalyst gives rise to a current density of 10 mA·cm-2 at a very low overpotential of 64 mV with outstanding long-term stability. The present strategy of doping NiSe2 -based electrocatalysts with transition metals paves a new pathway for the design and synthesis of electrocatalysts for large-scale electrochemical energy applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11474137 and 11674143), and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT 16R35). J. W. thanks for the support of MOE (MOE2016-T2-2-138) for research conducted at the National University of Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Magnetism and Magnetic Materials of MOE, Key Laboratory of Special Function Materials and Structure Design of MOE, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Tongtong Wang, Daqiang Gao & Desheng Xue

  2. Department of Material Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Engineering Drive 3, Singapore, 117575, Singapore

    Wen Xiao & John Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metal Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province and the Research Center of Biomedical Nanotechnology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Pinxian Xi

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  1. Tongtong Wang
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  2. Daqiang Gao
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Correspondence to Daqiang Gao or John Wang.

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Wang, T., Gao, D., Xiao, W. et al. Transition-metal-doped NiSe2 nanosheets towards efficient hydrogen evolution reactions. Nano Res. 11, 6051–6061 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2122-9

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